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One of my favorite memories of growing up was going to Mrs. Eden’s house for the annual Easter egg party. Mrs. Eden and her husband were retired and they loved kids. We loved every minute of making a big mess in her kitchen. When we were finished decorating the eggs, we ate a rabbit cake that had a pink gumdrop nose, licorice eyes and coconut fur. Down the street we went with a basket full of colorful hardboiled eggs.

After Easter comes and goes, your fridge might overflow with brightly colored eggs. What to do? Make egg salad! But to start, a person has to know how to make the perfect hardboiled egg, the kind that does not have that dreadful blue-green color around the edge of the yolk. There is an art to making the perfect hardboiled egg.

Put some eggs into a kettle and cover them with an inch of cold water. Bring to a rolling boil. Remove the kettle from the heat and cover it. Let the eggs stand for 4-6 minutes for soft boiled eggs, 7-9 for medium and 10-12 for hard. Here’s the anti-blue-green trick: when done (don’t forget to set the timer) immediately immerse them in an ice bath. The fast dunk into ice water is what keeps the yolks from turning that icky blue-green. Cool them and if you have the time, let them sit for an hour for easy peeling. Simply roll them on a hard surface until they crack all over then peel, starting at the big end.

Egg Salad

8 hardboiled eggs, chopped or shredded
⅓ to ½ cup mayonnaise
1 tablespoon yellow or brown spicy mustard
½ diced red onion
¼ cup finely chopped celery
1 tsp dill weed
½ teaspoon garlic powder
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon black pepper

Mix the mayonnaise and the mustard together. Add the other ingredients and mix gently. The easiest way to do the eggs is to grate them. If you have some bacon on hand, fry it up until it’s extra crispy and then crumble it into the salad. I like to use soft white bread to make sandwiches; hamburger buns are a favorite too. If you don’t have celery, you can use dill or sweet pickle relish. No red onion? White or yellow is fine, a shallot too. Capers are a nice addition. Remember, recipes are only guidelines; you can switch up and swap out the ingredients to your heart’s content using your senses as a guide. This salad tastes better after it sits in the fridge for a couple of hours.

Easter is only once a year but you don’t need that holiday as an excuse to make this delicious and inexpensive treat.

My friend Jerry makes the best fish and chips ever! Since I live in the middle of nowhere, I can’t run down to the local Skippers or beach fish house every time I want to eat those. So, I asked Jerry to teach me how to make them. Fish and chips are incredibly easy to cook and there are just a few dishes to wash.

Jerry has a Fry Daddy deep fat fryer made by Presto which makes deep fat frying remarkably easy. There is no temperature control to fiddle around with and it’s simple to use. You can reuse the oil, though it takes on a fishy taste so if you fry something else you will need to change the oil (a fish-flavored glazed donut anyone)? Jerry uses Pride of the West all-purpose batter mix which Two Boys in Condon carries and it’s one of their best-selling products. It’s really worthwhile to get a box of this because the batter makes a crispy, crunchy crust, the kind you may find yourself thinking about a week later.

Fish and Chips

Fresh or frozen white fish fillets (halibut, rock fish, perch etc.)
Russet potatoes
Pride of the West batter mix
Vegetable oil for frying
Malt vinegar
Tartar sauce
Ketchup

Wash and peel the potatoes. Cut them into thick fries; Jerry uses a French fry cutter made by Geedel. Heat the Fry Daddy. Carefully lower the fries into the hot oil. Fry them in batches to avoid overcrowding – you don’t want them to stick together. Cook about 4-5 minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towels. Sprinkle with salt and put them in the oven to keep warm.

Cut the fish into chunks. Dip them in the batter mix; coat with a generous amount because more coating equals more crunch. Cook them for 3-4 minutes until they are dark golden brown. The longer you cook them the crispier they will be. Cook in a well ventilated area or outside because your house will smell loudly of fish for a couple of days if you don’t do that.

My friend Eileen owns a Chinese restaurant and she says the best oil for frying is rice bran oil but Jerry uses Wesson oil. You can find rice bran oil at Asian markets or the restaurant supplier US Chefs store. Getting a Fry Daddy and a French fry gadget may seem like a bit of trouble, but once you do, you can make fish and chips anytime you want, even if you live in the middle of nowhere. You can also fry other things such as shrimp, mushrooms, sweet potato fries and so on. Thank you, Jerry, for the fish and chips lesson!

Have you ever been to a county fair and seen the entries where bakers make the same exact baked good but the results are so varied you wonder if they were baked on different planets? Why does that happen? That question made me want to conduct an experiment. So I made the exact same bread recipe, baked it in the exact same pan and oven but used different flours. 

I used a simple four-ingredient recipe from the book “Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day”. Using a recipe with just a few ingredients would narrow down the variables, wouldn’t it? I bought new bags of Montana Mills, Gold Medal and Pillsbury unbleached white all-purpose flour to eliminate lack of freshness as a possible variable.

The differences in the end results jolted me. The loaves didn’t even look similar and this fascinated me. Then my thoughts went macro: how on earth does a huge company like Pepperidge Farm bake millions of cakes with no variation decade after decade? That is truly a miracle. Now I want to take a course in food science! Oh dear, I digress.

My first loaf, made with the Montana Mills flour, rose high out of the pan and looked like the Matterhorn in the Swiss Alps with a sharp craggy peak of thick crisp crust. It had an altitude attitude! This bread was the ultimate bread for those texture loving sorts with its substantial crunchy crust and a delicate tender crumb that had big and little holes.

The second loaf I made with Pillsbury and the crust was smooth and uniform, what you’d expect to see in a high-class bakery. Standard would be the right word. The crumb was tender and spongy with medium size holes and the crust was crunchy but not overly so.

Last but not least was Gold Medal.  This one would win the color contest. The loaf was the perfect golden crispy caramelized brown color and just looking at it made my mouth water and crave honey and butter.

The quirky differences between these three loaves led me to speculate. Obviously all flour is not created equal, which when you think about it, is quite bizarre since to the naked eye it all looks the same. Why then the differences in each loaf? Is it the moon phase? Humidity? My mood? A mischievous kitchen gnome? So random! Mysterious! And while the bread pretty much tasted the same, the textures were wildly different which made me realize how important texture is in food.

And you know what? They were all first place winners. I made grilled cheddar cheese and raspberry jam sandwiches with all three. There wasn’t a crumb left over.

I recently came across a short film in the National Archives titled “A Step Saving Kitchen”. In 1949 the Department of Agriculture designed this innovative kitchen to make cooking and baking easier. The idea was to minimize the need to walk, stoop and stretch during kitchen tasks. The film mesmerized me and I watched it on pins and needles like it was some kind of thriller. I wondered why all the kitchens built since 1949 weren’t like this one because the design and functionality were beyond perfection; all other kitchens now paled in comparison. How awesome it would be to cook and bake in this space! But my feelings were bittersweet; I also felt great disappointment that this splendid kitchen wasn’t mine.

An army of professionals at the Bureau of Home Economics used systematic research and a lot of trial and error to get the final result. Models and prototypes of various features were built and many discarded or improved upon before final versions were adopted. Then the testing came and more changes and revisions were made. The end product was a thoughtful layout that fostered ease of movement that considered ergonomics too.

The kitchen has six centers, areas suited for particular tasks that make it easy for cooks to plan, cook, bake, prepare vegetables, serve and wash dishes. The kitchen operates as a smooth production line and considers comfortable work heights, handy storage, cross ventilation and natural light. A dining corner has a table that seats six people.

So here I am gleeful about finding the perfect kitchen and then the practical side of me kicks in. I realize how difficult it would be to build a kitchen like this in the rural area we live in. The kitchen has old-fashioned features that couldn’t be easily found in our modern day and age and they would need to be custom made. For a few days I fantasied about being thirty years old and with an entrepreneurial spirit, starting a company that fabricates this kitchen in modular fashion. The kitchen could be built where labor and materials were easily found, broken down and then whoosh! transported to the final destination. I would name the company “Pop-Up Kitchens”, Inc. Has someone, somewhere along the line already thought of this? I will probably never know.

Even if kitchen design doesn’t intrigue you, the black and white film definitely entertains; it made me realize how dramatically society has changed in 75 years. I’d be more than happy to send you the link to the film and the twenty-page booklet that contains the plans and blueprints; just shoot me an e-mail. And please invite me to the open house if you build this magical kitchen!

Once upon a time there was a Campbell’s product called “Apple Bourbon Sauce”. I bought it at Two Boys in Condon; it came in a pouch and was especially good on pork. I don’t know why I bought it in the first place because I tend to cook from scratch. But there it was perched in the pantry and one day I plopped some pork chops into the slow cooker, opened the bag and poured the sauce on them. That was easy! The first bite floored me. They were delicious! How could mass produced food made by giant, impersonal machines taste as good as food made by home cooks who infuse their creations with love?

I had just made a fresh batch of sauerkraut and reminisced about Sunday dinner at my Grandmother’s house. She was a German gal who made wickedly good pork chops, mashed potatoes and gravy and served it with a side of sauerkraut. My mind got fixated on pork chops and I remembered the excellent sauce from Campbell’s. I went to Two Boys to get some more and was sorely disappointed to see it wasn’t on the shelf. An internet search revealed that the company had discontinued it.

I stewed in my disappointment for a few days and mentioned my dismay to Ellie who has become quite an expert in using AI. She suggested that we launch an AI inquiry to get the recipe. The trick with AI is to ask the right questions and it can take a few tries. The question was “Can you create a recipe for a homemade version of Campbell’s Apple Bourbon Slow Cooker Sauce”? The AI informed us that the company hadn’t discontinued the sauce, just given it a new name. Now it’s called Hawaiian Pork.

Apple Bourbon Sauce

¼ cup decent bourbon
¼ cup apple juice or cider
¼ cup apple cider vinegar
3 tablespoons brown sugar
¼ cup ketchup
1 small onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 bay leaf
Salt, pepper and crushed red pepper flakes to taste

Mix all the ingredients together in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, simmer for about ten minutes. Strain to remove the onions, garlic and bay leaf. That’s all!

This sauce is utterly fabulous, one the best I have ever made. I put it on just about everything – baked potatoes, omelets, beans and I even ate it plain. The last time I made it, I quadrupled the recipe. The entire time I was writing this, my mouth watered. That’s some sauce!

Today is Leap Year Day. AI is definitely taking society for a quantum leap. Hold on! And while you’re at it, don’t hesitate to ask “IT” for recipes, even mass produced ones.

Last week I wrote about how to cook beans from scratch and why they are so much better than canned beans. Did I inspire you enough to go to the store and buy a bag or two? I hope so!

Taking the next step to make refried beans is almost too easy. Refried beans are not really fried twice as the name suggests. The word “refried” comes from the Spanish word “refritos”, which means “well-fried”. Refried beans are simply cooked beans that are fried and mashed in a skillet with some fat and seasonings, until they are creamy. You can use any kind of beans to make refried beans, but pinto beans and black beans are the most common. I may sound like I’m preaching to the choir but if you can find heirloom beans, those are the best.

Refried Beans

4 cups cooked beans and some reserved bean broth
¼ cup fat – olive oil, lard or bacon fat
1 small onion, preferably white, sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
½ teaspoon salt

Heat the fat in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and garlic and sauté until soft. Add the beans, salt and ½ cup of the reserved cooking liquid. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer, stirring and mashing the beans with a potato masher or an immersion blender until they are smooth and thick. Add more liquid if needed to adjust the consistency. The whole process takes only about 15 minutes.

I mash my beans with a machacadoro, the traditional tool authentic cooks use in Mexico. I’m not a gadget person but this is one of those wonderful things that I had no idea I wanted until I got one. The beans really do turn out better when I use this than when I use the potato masher or immersion blender. Some recipes call for oregano, cumin or chili powder; I prefer not to use those. Refried beans made from scratch are so delicious they almost don’t need any seasonings or toppings but it’s not against the law if you want to add some.

Refried beans store well in the refrigerator or freezer. You can reheat them in the microwave or on the stove, adding a little water if they are too dry. They are a great source of protein, fiber, iron and antioxidants, and they are also gluten-free and vegan (if you use oil instead of animal fat).

I wrote these last three columns for Steve, the editor of this newspaper, when I found out he did not know how to make refried beans. Now that you know how Steve, I’m going to hold you to it and pepper you with questions the next time I see you. You’re on the hook!

Last week I wrote about falling in love with refried beans and learning how to make them. They are simple to cook and are the ultimate comfort food on a cold winter day.

The number of people who don’t know how to cook beans from scratch surprises me so they eat them from cans. Are they afraid of the beans? Is it because there is so much confusion about the right way to cook them  – to salt or not to salt, that is the question! Presoak or no? Cooking beans from dried is not mysterious or rocket science and takes little skill and effort. The results are so superior to canned beans that it’s one of those “shall not be named things”, so let’s not even talk about it. Plus there is a whole universe of fantabulous (yes, that’s a word) heirloom beans that are remarkably delicious and you can eat them plain, straight from the pot. So many flavors have been lost in the interest of commodity food production and people do not know what they are missing. Sad.

Start with the highest quality, freshest beans available. Beans get old; I vacuum pack mine if I don’t plan to use them within six months. You can cook beans on the top of the stove, in the oven, a crockpot, or a pressure cooker. I use an Instant Pot pressure cooker but since you may not have one of those, or even know what one is, I will write about the oven method.

In a Dutch oven or oven-safe pot, add one pound of beans (a one pound package will make six cups cooked). Rinse them several times and watch out for gravel that could crack a tooth. Cover with about two inches of water. I add a scant quarter cup of my favorite ingredient, Maggi’s Klare Bruhe, a powdered European broth mix. Klare Bruhe is so good I don’t even think of it as food, but more like a magic potion (it’s available on Amazon). Toss in a few bay leaves. A lot of recipes call for adding aromatics like celery, onion, carrot and garlic to the beans but I find Klare Bruhe adds even more flavor. Bring the beans to a boil on the stove then simmer for about ten minutes. Put the pot in a 350⁰ oven. Cook until the beans are soft; that can be anywhere between 30 minutes to two hours. You can look up cooking times on the internet . . . or ask the AI. Too many beans? You can freeze the extra in their cooking liquid. Next week we will mash them up and maybe you too will fall in love with refried beans.

Lately I’ve been reminiscing about riding my paint quarter horse, Quincy, on my friend Lolita’s five hundred acre working farm in Hubbard, Oregon. Lolita and I rode most Sunday mornings and we would laugh and say that we were at “The Church of the Horse”. Riding with her was a deeply spiritual experience because on every ride we would see sights that were breathtakingly beautiful and the images would stay with me for the whole week. For example, on one winter not-a-cloud-in-the-sky morning icicles blanked the bare trees in the hazelnut orchard; they looked like glass and mirrored the sun’s rays in a dazzling rainbow of light. Millions of tiny ice beads sparkled on snow white ground. The sun warmed my back and I took it all in like I was a sponge. 

Most afternoons on the way home I’d stop at the local Mexican restaurant run by a very amicable “Senor Lopez”. The place was not exactly posh but it had a warm, cozy feel. On the cold days, I’d always order the same thing: a bowl of refried beans and a pot of cinnamon tea. The beans had this amazing nourishing, comfort food feel and they were served plain. I don’t even remember putting salsa on them, they were so delicious. I do remember asking the cook what kind of bean she used and she said Peruvian. Those beans have a pale yellow hue and are creamy with a meaty flavor.

All this recent reminiscing about Senor Lopez’s finally got me motivated to make refried beans. I went onto the Rancho Gordo website (my mail order source for heirloom beans) and read a blog post about how to make authentic refried beans. Cooking them was so simple that I wondered why it had taken me over a decade to finally get around to making them. But better late than never, eh? My first batch turned out quite well and I had the same experience as when I ate them at Senor Lopez’s. They nourished my soul as well as my tummy.

Last week I visited the editor of this paper, Steve Allen, and I gave him a bag of cranberry beans. He said that he didn’t cook beans from dried and used canned instead. I told him how easy it was to cook beans from scratch then tried to explain it to him. Then it occurred to me that I could write a column about how to cook them, so Steve, this one is for you!

But now I am out of room so I will start with the instructions for “Refried Beans 101” next week. Stay tuned!

I wrote Lolita a letter when she was on her deathbed and to this day it remains the best writing I’ve ever done.

You know by now that I am a fan of food made from scratch ingredients. Usually boxed food or “cheat and heats” just don’t hold a candle to food cooked with love and real ingredients.

I can’t now recall how a box of Pillsbury Quick Bread banana nut mix made its way into the pantry. Perhaps in the middle of the night it snuck in on little cat feet? Or maybe in an unconscious daze I plucked it off a shelf at the grocery store. Regardless, there it sat in the cupboard and I was curious to try it. I baked it up and the first bite pleasantly surprised me. Often boxed cake mixes are overly sweet and the textures are boring. But not this one. The banana flavor was concentrated and not overpowered by sweetness. The bread had a nice crumbly texture, like a cross between a cake and a quick bread. If someone told me this imposter loaf was homemade I would have believed them.

Now I was curious. Who else made banana bread/muffin mix? I found boxes of Krusteaz and Betty Crocker. Krusteaz won by a long shot. Sorry Betty! But who was the clear winner now – Pillsbury or Krusteaz? I liked Pillsbury’s banana bread the best, mostly because of its light and crumbly texture. Krusteaz had a heavier, spongy texture but it was delicious too. Either way, eating minimal effort banana bread with my morning coffee is such a treat.

The Krusteaz box had a recipe for banana chocolate chip cookies. I gave them a whirl and they were similar to a classic chocolate chip cookie but with subtle banana flavor. I made one batch each with the Krusteaz and Pillsbury mixes. I preferred the Krusteaz cookies but Pillsbury’s were certainly good. The recipe called for sugar but I feared they would be too sweet so omitted it. I added vanilla too.

Quick Banana Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 box banana bread/muffin mix
¾ cup softened butter
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup chocolate chips
Nuts, optional

Blend the butter with the mix until all the lumps disappear; I used my hands. Add the egg and the vanilla, mix well. Stir in the chocolate chips/nuts. Drop by spoonfuls onto a greased cookie sheet and bake at 350⁰ for about 15 minutes. The longer they bake the less banana flavor they have. Because I don’t like things to be too sweet I used 70% dark chocolate chips.

There could be endless variations to both the cookies and the bread. White chocolate chips and macadamia nuts? Figs and hazelnuts? Fancy! Maybe it’s okay to cheat sometimes, especially when a few real scratch ingredients and a big dose of love are added in.

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been writing about the joys of baking fancy artisan bread. I read a book titled “Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day” and learned there are five books in the series. I plan to do a lot of baking and experimenting. Oh what fun!

For my first try, I followed the instructions exactly and made a classic round artisan loaf. But then I wondered if I could bake the dough in a loaf pan to make sandwich bread. My friend Randall has a cast iron loaf pan and I sheepishly admit that I am very envious about it, and covet it greatly. How would bread bake in that cast iron loaf pan? I wanted to know before I bought my own so I invited myself over to Randall’s for a “bake-in”.

I arrived with the wad of dough in my tote bag. We cranked the oven up to 450⁰, lined the pan with parchment paper, plopped in the dough and waited for it to rise. Then we put the pan into the oven. Forty minutes later the bread was done. Wow, it looked like fancy bread from a high end bakery in some swank neighborhood where foodies abound. But would it taste good, the texture be right? While it was still warm we sawed off the first slice and smeared it with butter. The bread was utterly delicious! We devoured the entire loaf right then and there. Now I was even more jealous of Randall’s loaf pan.

A few days later I wanted to make another loaf. I didn’t have a cast iron loaf pan yet so I used one made of ceramic. I followed the same process as before expecting that I would get the same result. I didn’t! The bread was dark golden brown on the outside but unbaked in the center. What to do? The toaster! Three tries got the center baked but the slices shrunk to about ⅔ the original size. And the crust was like a rock. Now what? Re-bake it! I put the loaf in a 450⁰ oven and after 30 minutes, the bread was like a hockey puck with a creamy center.

Mistakes are a necessary part of the learning process. If I continue to experiment and fiddle around with bread baking, I will probably make a lot of mistakes. Randall and I agreed that “Don’t be afraid!” could be a good motto in the kitchen. After all, if you don’t play you can’t win, or improve. If you learn something from a mistake then it isn’t a mistake. So bring on those mistakes! They may even taste good with butter.